Blog category: Medical History

October 5, 2018

In 1818, British obstetrician James Blundell performed the first human-to-human blood transfusion. Although the patient died, Blundell’s transfusion experiments, and his certainty that human patients required human blood, led to advances in transfusion medicine that continue into the present. Here’s a bit of blood transfusion history. There’s even a Bonaparte connection.

October 6, 2017

In the years after Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1815 defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, London hosted numerous exhibits related to the fallen French Emperor. Napoleon’s carriage was displayed, his battles formed the subjects of panoramas, the events of his life were depicted, and his portrait and various effects appeared on show. The oddest exhibit was a girl with Napoleon in her eyes.

August 18, 2017

Although cancer was known to the ancients, cancer treatment in the 19th century had not advanced much beyond the methods used during the time of Hippocrates (circa 460-370 BC). These consisted of diet, bloodletting and laxatives. Surgery was also used to treat cancer, but since general anaesthesia was not available until the 1840s, and antiseptics were not broadly introduced until the 1860s, operations were extremely painful and had a poor prognosis.

October 21, 2016

July 15, 2016

Napoleon Bonaparte died when he was 51 years old. Though his life was cut short by stomach cancer, he lived a reasonable life span for someone who was born in 1769, when life expectancy at birth was no more than 40 years. Even factoring out infant mortality, the life expectancy for white men in the early 1800s was probably less than 60 years. People looked to the very old for clues about how to live a long life, just as they do today.

April 25, 2014

An Italian immigrant who served in Napoleon’s Grande Armée, Félix Formento became a prominent medical practitioner in 19th century New Orleans. He fathered a son who similarly became a doctor and worked for a Napoleon on the battlefield. Formento also holds the distinction of being the Napoleon in America character who lived the longest non-fictional life.